Mugby Junction

by Charles Dickens

He took up his hat and walked out, just in time to see, passing along on
the opposite side of the way, a velveteen man, carrying his day's dinner
in a small bundle that might have been larger without suspicion of
gluttony, and pelting away towards the Junction at a great pace.

"There's Lamps!" said Barbox Brothers. "And by the bye--"

Ridiculous, surely, that a man so serious, so self-contained, and not yet
three days emancipated from a routine of drudgery, should stand rubbing
his chin in the street, in a brown study about Comic Songs.

"Bedside?" said Barbox Brothers testily. "Sings them at the bedside? Why
at the bedside, unless he goes to bed drunk? Does, I shouldn't wonder.
But it's no business of mine. Let me see. Mugby Junction, Mugby
Junction. Where shall I go next? As it came into my head last night
when I woke from an uneasy sleep in the carriage and found myself here, I
can go anywhere from here. Where shall I go? I'll go and look at the
Junction by daylight. There's no hurry, and I may like the look of one
Line better than another."

But there were so many Lines. Gazing down upon them from a bridge at the
Junction, it was as if the concentrating Companies formed a great
Industrial Exhibition of the works of extraordinary ground spiders that
spun iron. And then so many of the Lines went such wonderful ways, so
crossing and curving among one another, that the eye lost them. And then
some of them appeared to start with the fixed intention of going five
hundred miles, and all of a sudden gave it up at an insignificant
barrier, or turned off into a workshop. And then others, like
intoxicated men, went a little way very straight, and surprisingly slued
round and came back again. And then others were so chock-full of trucks
of coal, others were so blocked with trucks of casks, others were so
gorged with trucks of ballast, others were so set apart for wheeled
objects like immense iron cotton-reels: while others were so bright and
clear, and others were so delivered over to rust and ashes and idle
wheelbarrows out of work, with their legs in the air (looking much like
their masters on strike), that there was no beginning, middle, or end to
the bewilderment.

Barbox Brothers stood puzzled on the bridge, passing his right hand
across the lines on his forehead, which multiplied while he looked down,
as if the railway Lines were getting themselves photographed on that
sensitive plate. Then was heard a distant ringing of bells and blowing
of whistles. Then, puppet-looking heads of men popped out of boxes in
perspective, and popped in again. Then, prodigious wooden razors, set up
on end, began shaving the atmosphere. Then, several locomotive engines
in several directions began to scream and be agitated. Then, along one
avenue a train came in. Then, along another two trains appeared that
didn't come in, but stopped without. Then, bits of trains broke off.
Then, a struggling horse became involved with them. Then, the
locomotives shared the bits of trains, and ran away with the whole.

"I have not made my next move much clearer by this. No hurry. No need
to make up my mind to-day, or to-morrow, nor yet the day after. I'll
take a walk."

It fell out somehow (perhaps he meant it should) that the walk tended to
the platform at which he had alighted, and to Lamps's room. But Lamps
was not in his room.